Its Agriculture. 339 



were clue to the influence of the Flemish immigrants, were the 

 reclamation of those fen lands amidst which they had settled, 

 and the cultivation of turnips and annual grass seeds. 



On account of their fowl and fish, the marshy wastes of 

 England had heretofore been estimated at a fictitious value 

 by their neighbouring inhabitants. Certainly they afforded 

 support to vast flocks of tame geese, and the book of the 

 Boston Custom House shows that it was not unusual to send 

 off in one year 300 bags of feathers, weighing 1^ cwt. each 

 bag. Nor are these statistics beyond the bounds of credibility 

 when we reflect that the unfortunate goose underwent several 

 pluckings during the year before its owner considered the 

 harvest of quills and plumage complete. The lower classes of 

 the agricultural community were therefore indisposed to favour 

 any innovations on their fen rights, the more so because the 

 system pursued where marshes had been already reclaimed ^ 

 did not encourage them to 'uc^ the process. They had seen 

 avaricious cottagers pay an annual trifle for the rights of 

 turning on the reclaimed land a huge flock of geese, which 

 rendered the entire herbage uneatable for the solitary cow or 

 few sheep of a neighbour whose rights had cost him just as 

 much. On the other hand, the landed proprietors, though 

 anxious to reclaim such wastes, were deterred from so doing 

 on account of the intermixture of mortmain estates and the 

 varying rights of bordering parishes. Flemish energy, how- 

 ever, found means to overcome these difficulties, and systematic 

 attempts were made in many localities to drain tracts of marsh 

 country. It is not improbable that the acre tax or acre shot, 

 such as 2,s\ Q)d. for draining Hadenham Level, may have owed 

 its origin to this period of history,^ and Norden records the 

 successful experiments, about this same age, of Captain Lovell 

 and Mr. Englebert in improving the marshy wastes of no less 

 than three counties.^ What the Romans had begun, and the 

 monks of Thorney, Crowland, Ramsey, Ely and Spinney carried 



^ Eees, Encyclo., sub voc. Fens. 



^ Ibid. ; vide also Sir Jonas Moore, History of the Great Level of the 

 Fennes, 1685. 



^ Norden, T7ie Surveyor''s Dialogue. 



